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Literary analysis on the enlightenment period
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There has been a long lasting argument about the two views on life of two men, Golding, and Rousseau. Golding’s view on life is that man is naturally evil at any age. He also believes that civilization makes man good due to the excessive amount of rules that makes man enter a state in which they are no longer in their natural states. Rousseau has an opinion in which man is naturally pure but instead of civilization making man good, it makes man bad due to all of the schemes involved in civilization. Golding used Lord of the Flies to try to combat Rousseau’s ideas on life and promote his own. Although Golding thought his book would debunk Rousseau’s theory it promoted it at the same time, some aspects of both men’s theories are present in not only the book but the movie also. I personally believe in Rousseau’s ideas because man seems to be naturally good in the fact its only main idea is to live life, no harm right?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a great philosopher who lived in the Enlightenment. He was a very influential philosopher and “Thinker” he has written many books including The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Rousseau’s theory was in essence that humans were created naturally pure and innocent but over time and new technologies become more evil. He had thought that in the very first light of man he was completely innocent, a being who had no intention to harm anyone else. However as time progressed and the growing capacity for man increased and the
knowledge base of human kind increased man began to explore more possibilities and more options which gave them the idea that led them to become more evil. Rousseau explained his theories and thoughts in many of his books which inspired and influenced so many pe...
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... can be commonly accepted as he lived and thought in the Enlightenment era where he saw that humans were more pure when born due to the sheer amount of religion during that time period and religion made people pure do to the beliefs of the most common religions back then. On the other hand Golding lived in another time period in which a major war was taking place. He probably saw how the barbaric tendencies of uncivilized attackers showed how a well-built civilization makes all the difference in man and makes them good. All in all I believe in both sides but have come to the conclusion that if I truly had to choose one side of the argument I would side with Rousseau due to the fact of modern day humans wanting so much freedom that when they had it they could be peaceful because they could do what they want without anyone else ever interrupting or stopping them.
The book Lord of the Flies Jack the leader of the savages wasn't always bad. William Goldberg the author says that everyone is capable of becoming evil, where philosophers like Jean- Jacques Rousseau who implied that it was our environment that shapes us. While Golding has some good points on his theory I have to agree With Rousseau because of many of his beliefs.
Human nature; a philosophy debated heavily throughout the ages is something that is more of perspective and opinionated views rather than fact tries to explain what or who we really are at our cores. William Golding and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are philosophy on 2 totally opposing sides of human nature and it’s relation to civilized society. Golding’s Lord of the Flies gives you a good idea as to where he stands, and just how horrible humans can be without a sense of order. Civilization has been around for centuries and functions on human desires, as twisted as it may seem at times. Rousseau believes that with many freedoms, humans will only revert to their natural goodness, caring for each other as a whole for the greater good. I stand by Golding as my evidence lays in media and history.
Rousseau beings his work with a flattering dedication to his country of origin, Geneva. He praises the government of Geneva by stating that one is only free when everyone is governed equally by the same law. Even with Rousseau’s intention that law and government should be of the people, it is not a true form of freedom. Man is considered free when he has the ability to make laws for himself, natural law, instead of outwardly imposed laws that conflict with man’s personal morality. Rousseau's comparison of liberty to wine and meat is not parallel: Liberty is not something that turns negative when experienced in excess. It leads to constant progression which leads to an improvement in society. This idea that progress is negative in nature is a recurring and fundamentally wrong.
Rousseau, however, believed, “the general will by definition is always right and always works to the community’s advantage. True freedom consists of obedience to laws that coincide with the general will.”(72) So in this aspect Rousseau almost goes to the far extreme dictatorship as the way to make a happy society which he shows in saying he, “..rejects entirely the Lockean principle that citizens possess rights independently of and against the state.”(72)
John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, following their predecessor Thomas Hobbes, both attempt to explain the development and dissolution of society and government. They begin, as Hobbes did, by defining the “state of nature”—a time before man found rational thought. In the Second Treatise[1] and the Discourse on Inequality[2], Locke and Rousseau, respectively, put forward very interesting and different accounts of the state of nature and the evolution of man, but the most astonishing difference between the two is their conceptions of property. Both correctly recognize the origin of property to be grounded in man’s natural desire to improve his life, but they differ in their description of the result of such a desire. Locke sees the need and purpose of society to protect property as something sacred to mankind, while Rousseau sees property as the cause of the corruption and eventual downfall of society. Although Rousseau raises interesting and applicable observations, Locke’s argument triumphs because he successfully shows the positive and essential effect of property on man.
At the core of their theories, both Locke and Rousseau seek to explain the origin of civil society, and from there to critique it, and similarly both theorists begin with conceptions of a state of nature: a human existence predating civil society in which the individual does not find institutions or laws to guide or control one’s behaviour. Although both theorists begin with a state of nature, they do not both begin with the same one. The Lockean state of nature is populated by individuals with fully developed capacities for reason. Further, these individuals possess perfect freedom and equality, which Locke intends as granted by God. They go about their business rationally, acquiring possessions and appropriating property, but they soon realize the vulnerability of their person and property without any codified means to ensure their security...
Rousseau is firstly justified in his claim that perfectibility led to the abolishment of the gentleness of natural man and resulted in a competition
When Golding wrote Lord of the Flies in 1954, he was trying to demonstrate exactly that. Golding stated in a 1962 speech at the University of California at Los Angeles, that the social and moral breakdown of the children was caused “simply and solely out of the nature of the brute” (Golding, "Fable" 42). But like many great works, Golding’s novel has been scrutinized, analyzed, and criticized time and time again, and many dissenting opinions have emerged. Golding does not hold his opinion as law on the subject either. In the same speech, Golding recognized these new opinions.
Overall Rousseau explanation of the state of nature and social contract are extremely interesting and enticing. Past that it does seem hard to believe, given the supporting data, that humans are not social animals and that a time when humans were completely good. If one of the two main points were to fail, as they truly are the foundation of Rousseau arguments, it seems it would cause his conclusion to fail as well. Unfortunately his arguments lack the backing they need to create a truly infallible argument or beyond reasonable doubt. This does not suggest at all that his ideas are false or are not supported, just that they are on shaky ground.
Rousseau writes that humanity is a mixture of good and evil. There are people who follow the education of nature and become self-reliant individuals. There are also those who tamper with nature and deprive individuals of their freedoms. They are the evil ones. Rousseau held such a position because he was raised much in the manner he wrote of, with no formal education until his twenties. His work is a production of the Enlightenment. Although he was unaware of psychology, his views on how to educate and raise a child are studied in current theories of human development. Rousseau had a mixed view if humanity was good or evil.
Rousseau came to the conclusion that the best way to examine the inequality in society is to examine the beginning of mankind itself. He tried to imagine the early state of man assuming there was ever actually a state where man existed only with the nature, in a solitary, and primitive lifestyle. He did not however revert as far back to the idea of the Neanderthal man to examine the ideas man held and where they came from. Instead, he looked at a state where man looked, and seemed to have the same physical abilities as he does today. Rousseau also concedes that a time where the ideas of government, ownership, justice, and injustice did not exist may not have ever existed. If what many religions tell us is true, then, in mans beginning, he was from the start, handed down laws from god which would influence his thinking and decisions. Through this, the only way such a period could come about would have to be through some catastrophic event, which would not only be impossible to explain, but consequently, impossible to prove. Therefore, imagining this state could prove not only embarrassing, but would be a contradiction to the Holy Scriptures.
While the problems within civil society may differ for these two thinkers it is uncanny how similar their concepts of freedom are, sometimes even working as a logical expansion of one another. Even in their differences they shed light onto new problems and possible solutions, almost working in tandem to create a freer world. Rousseau may not introduce any process to achieve complete freedom but his theorization of the general will laid the groundwork for much of Marx’s work; similarly Marx’s call for revolution not only strengthens his own argument but also Rousseau’s.
Rousseau and Aristotle both believe that some people are naturally superior to others and together they create a well-rounded understanding of how superiority complexes are justified. While Aristotle believes that this implies that men are better than woman and the horribly disfigured (or slaves), Rousseau feels humans have evolved so much over their history that “civil” humans are naturally
The political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx examined the role that the state played and its relationship to its citizen’s participation and access to the political economy during different struggles and tumultuous times. Rousseau was a believer of the concept of social contract with limits established by the good will and community participation of citizens while government receives its powers given to it. Karl Marx believed that power was to be taken by the people through the elimination of the upper class bourgeois’ personal property and capital. While both philosophers created a different approach to establishing the governing principles of their beliefs they do share a similar concept of eliminating ownership of capital and distributions from the government. Studying the different approaches will let us show the similarities of principles that eliminate abuse of power and concentration of wealth by few, and allow access for all. To further evaluate these similarities, we must first understand the primary principles of each of the philosophers’ concepts.
In his Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau hypothesizes the natural state of man to understand where inequality commenced. To analyze the nature of man, Rousseau “strip[ped] that being, thus constituted, of all the supernatural gifts he could have received, and of all the artificial faculties he could have acquired only through a lengthy process,” so that all that was left was man without any knowledge or understanding of society or the precursors that led to it (Rousseau 47). In doing so, Rousseau saw that man was not cunning and devious as he is in society today, but rather an “animal less strong than some, less agile than others, but all in all, the most advantageously organized of all” (47). Rousseau finds that man leads a simple life in the sense that “the only goods he knows in the un...